europe

Railways in Europe - Part 3: France

My journey through Europe continues, this time in France...

We arrived very early in the morning on the Thellõ, as in 6am early. Europe is pretty chilly at that time of the morning, but Dijon was fairly alive. We had a few hours to kill so I went exploring.

My first introduction to the SNCF, there was lots to see. There were articulated electric units like the above, articulated diesel multiple units like below, articulated TGVs, and loco hauled trains.

Railways in Europe - Part 2: Italy

My journey through Europe continues, this time in Italy...

Mrs A had promised me that I'd see many more trains in Italy, and she wasn't wrong. As we drove up the country and across to Naples, we passed many tracks, and at a depressingly bland truck stop on the highway, high speed ETR trains whizzed by every couple of minutes. However it wasn't until we got to Rome that I spied much in the way of trains.

Our hotel was just up the road from Termini railway station, which had trams, local trains, long distance trains, high speed trains, metro, and tram-trains!

I rode the metro home one day, and while fast and easy, I can't be as complimentary towards the state of their rolling stock:

After taking a few photos on the platform ...

Railways in Europe - Part 1: Greece

Please excuse the cobwebs, I was over in Europe for three weeks with Mrs A and 21 smelly teenagers on a Greek/Roman history field trip. While mostly history related, I did manage to sneak in some sly railfanning here and there.

Our trip started in Athens, Greece. Not a whole lot to see in Greece, railways wise. The national rail network (OSE, for Hellenic Railways Organisation) is in a bit of a sorry state, and the country's geography isn't the most railway-friendly so many of the lines meander. That said, apparently they have the fifth largest (by length) railway network in the EU. Between government cuts, creative accounting, and a mix of rail gauges, things for OSE are pretty dire. In many ways they are the poster-child of the Greek financial crisis, as OSE's annual debt interest payments alone are three times what it earns in revenue! Quite how one turns the tables on that situation I have no idea.

Athens

My introduction to European r...